From Biologist To Woodworker - AccessNW

Local Moscow, Idaho artist, Kristin Levier, discusses her passion for creating flowing, life-like sculptures out of wood.

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Full Transcript:

As an undergraduate, I studied Molecular biology and biochemistry. But I always wanted to be an artist and a scientist.

My name is Kristin Levier and I’m an artist, a sculptor and I live in Moscow Idaho.

I always needed balance in my life and while I loved studying science, I always needed to do something creative. I was always knitting or drawing. Just something. And when I was in Grad school there was wood shop, just an open access wood shop. And you could walk in with zero skills whatsoever and I wanted furniture. At the wood shop, I could make furniture so I walked in not knowing how to do anything and then the people at the wood shop just taught me everything.

We moved to the Palouse, I decided I wanted to do wood working full-time. And maybe make things to sell at craft markets and things like that. So I’ve been making sculpture for 11 years now, or sort of maybe nine years. The early years, I don’t think you can actually call what I made sculpture.

I’m really inspired by how things move. And I have Google searches of wind blowing hair and things like that. But truthfully, I’ve worked in labs long enough, I really love my Microscopy. And so when I see motion of bacteria with their flagella moving in liquids or octopuses or things like that in water, the tail of sperm. I love motion like this and somehow I work with this really rigid material wood. But I try to make it look it’s in motion. And I don’t even think that initially that’s what I started out to do and now It’s sort of become an obsession. That’s just all my work. I just try to make it look alive and flowing. And I’m sure it comes out of my biological background.

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